Lakewood resident Lillian Rudd rolls down the car’s driver-side window  just long enough to chat with her friend Kay Seamayer following their Tuesday morning basketball practice. After a moment, Rudd cuts the conversation short, saying she has to go. “Gotta deliver ‘meals on wheels’ to those old people,” explains the 92-year-old.

It’s one of Seamayer’s favorite anecdotes (and there are plenty) speaking to Rudd’s spunky character. “As she drove off, waving all the way, she laid scratch on the church parking lot,” adds Seamayer, who coaches Rudd’s Texas Challenge 80+ basketball team.

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In addition to her post on Texas Challenge, Rudd is the eldest member of the Granny Globetrotters, an exhibition team comprising members of Basketball and Fitness for Senior Women, a group founded by Seamayer a few years ago. The grannies show off during halftime at collegiate sporting events and the like, and have even hooped it up at a Dallas Mavericks game, though Rudd quips, “I doubt they’ll have us go goof around out there again.”

She might be the senior senior, but Rudd has game — and it isn’t just for show. She has competed in a handful of sports including basketball, swimming and shuffleboard during the National Senior Games (watch for her in August during 2009 Summer Senior events); and she has accumulated several dozen medals — so many she hopes to give a handful away to kids at an upcoming speaking gig.

In her presence, one begins to sense that Rudd, whom many might peg as a 60- rather than a 90-something, might hold some secret about life and its answers. And then you get it:

Peering out her living room window at rusty ring above her driveway, she says, simply, “Basketball. When I am feeling blue, I can just go out and shoot some hoops.”

55+ and still slam dunkin’? Contact Kay Seamayer at Basketball and Fitness for Senior Women 972.230.4980 or basketballandfitnesssforseniorwomen.com

Related content: Video of the Granny Globetrotters in action.